3 Responses to “what is the connection between the law of conservation momentum and a billiard game?”

1. justjoshua18 says:

   August 21, 2009 at 5:20 pm

   if i remember clearly….the law can be summarized as…..momentum cant be lost but is only transferred from one body to another……..prac. apllicatn……imagine a white ball being aimed at a black ball in a billiard game………the moment the white ball is hit with the stick, the momentum is transferred from the person into the stick and then to the white ball…this gives the white ball velocity with which it moves towards the black ball……the moment it hits the black ball, all its momentum is then transferred into the black ball, this gives the black ball its velocity….
   yay…once again…the law has been upheld……..(i think)
2. kuiperbelt2003 says:

   August 24, 2009 at 6:29 am

   conservation of momentum holds that in the absence of external forces, the total momentum in a system is conserved; when two billiard balls strike, there are no external forces acting on them (the force of each one colliding with the other is internal to the system), so momentum is always conserved in collisions

   conservation of momentum means that the total momentum (or mass times velocity) before the collision equals the total momenutm after collision

   say you strike one ball and aim it at an initially stationary target; before collision, all the momentum is in the ball you struck with the cue stick; after collision, the momentum is distributed between the two balls, but in such a way that the sum of the two balls’ momenta after collision equals the momentum of the one ball before collsion

   now, to make it a little more detailed, remember that momentum is a vector, that means the direction of the momentum is important

   so let’s say you hit a ball, it hits another ball, and they go off at different angles; we can think of each ball as having an x component of momentum and a y component of momentum

   since momentum is a vector, we know that the x component of momentum before collision is equal to the x component of momentum after collision

   and separately the y component of momentum before collision equals the y component of momentum after collision

   and one more little tidbit for billiard balls…because the collision between billiard balls loses very little energy, the two billiard balls will move away in directions that make a 90 degree angle (this will happen unless you have a dead center collision and the two balls follow each other into the pocket and you scratch)

   whew, hope this was not too much and hope it helps
3. micka_boy72 says:

   August 27, 2009 at 6:47 am

   read the law and review what it says…. LOL….

   i think it’s only transferring of momentum to one body to another… and so on and so forth……..

   haha….